


narcissus poeticus

by spiralingcosmos



Category: House M.D.
Genre: First Kiss, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Mild Gore, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29115912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralingcosmos/pseuds/spiralingcosmos
Summary: It's hard to ignore your feelings when they've quite literally taken root within you.
Relationships: Greg House/James Wilson
Comments: 15
Kudos: 125





	narcissus poeticus

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe there's only one hanahaki fic in this entire tag. do better people. cw for hanahaki-typical blood and gore. takes place in s6, probably around 6x17 lockdown-ish? more stuff in the end notes!

Clinic duty this time of year always felt like some kind of sick joke, and wasn’t it just House’s luck that he didn’t have a case right now?

All day he’d been in exam rooms, writing prescriptions for medication that would slow the disease’s progress and recommending surgery. Something about the looming threat of Valentine’s Day seemed to make the lovesick especially susceptible to the illness. Everyone always thought they would be fine, everyone thought they were some kind of exception, that they could handle it, and by the time they realized they couldn’t it was far too late.

House couldn’t even gripe to Wilson about it, because he hadn’t seen the man all day. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was being avoided.

He was scheduled to be down there for another two hours, but he’d just seen a terrified teenage boy in the early stages and a resigned older woman who had waited far too long back to back, and quite frankly he didn’t think he could handle this for much longer. Also, Taub owed him a favor.

House managed to escape the clinic undetected at long last, and was safely in the elevator before anyone caught up with him.

The hand that had caught the elevator door gave way to an arm, which gave way to an entire person, and Wilson stepped inside the car with him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the clinic?”

House grunted. “You’d be sneaking out too if you’d just seen five people in a row with late-stage hanahaki.”

Wilson grimaced. “Jesus.”

“Thought you weren’t too fond of the guy.”

“I hate Valentine’s,” Wilson murmured, ignoring him. “Never means anything good.”

“You’re telling me,” House said. The elevator shuddered to a stop, the doors sliding open.

The two stepped off in tandem, walking back towards their offices. 

“Hey, Taub, go pretend to be me in the clinic for a bit,” House called into the conference room, tossing his name tag to the other man. Wilson rolled his eyes.

“So no plans tonight, I assume?” House walked into his own office, assuming Wilson was following. “‘Cause I’ve found this _great_ little Greek place that’ll deliver.”

Wilson smiled apologetically. “I’m stuck here until late tonight,” he explained. “I have a patient dying, and he asked me to be there when it happens.”

House sighed dramatically. “Well, I hope you and your cancer date have a fun Valentine’s.” 

Mild annoyance flickered in Wilson’s eyes, and he left, shaking his head.

As House sat down at his desk, alone, he felt an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. He frowned. That was definitely unusual, but almost certainly nothing. He could deal with it later.

-

It had been about a week since House had first noticed the slight pinch in his chest, and it hadn’t gotten any better. In fact, it had gotten worse, fast, to the point where he was often out of breath just walking from his bike to the hospital. Logically, he knew that was something to get checked out; maybe he’d developed asthma, or something worse.

Either way, he thought he was doing a bang-up job hiding it. 

“Are you okay?” Wilson asked for the millionth time, looking at House from his seat at his desk as the older man collapsed on his couch, breathing hard.

House glared at him. “I’m fine.”

Yeah. No one had caught on yet. Definitely.

It only got worse from there. He had developed a cough, a painful, hacking thing that couldn’t be disguised. His ducklings were in varying degrees concerned about and suspicious of him, Cuddy was worried about him, and Wilson was…

Well. House wasn’t sure what Wilson thought about all this, because he was avoiding him. 

He was in the middle of running a differential when he started coughing worse than ever. This time, he felt something shift in his chest, something that lodged in his windpipe and forced its way up.

Staggering to his feet, House nearly knocked over the whiteboard in his haste. 

“I’ll be right back,” he rasped, and made his way out the door and towards the bathroom as fast as he could.

Just in time, too; he’d barely locked the stall door behind him before he was on his knees, leg screaming in pain at the awkward position, choking into the toilet. Finally, finally, something came of it -- a single, bloodied flower.

Breathing heavily, House examined the bloom now floating in the toilet bowl. It wasn’t too large at all, hardly worth the trouble it had given him. He counted six petals, white, one of which had detached itself, and one cup-shaped corona. 

_Narcissus poeticus_. A daffodil.

Great. Fantastic, even. He’d traded one Narcissus for another, and this one didn’t even get him high.

He spit some more blood into the toilet and leaned back against the stall, lungs feeling clearer than they had in at least a week; of course, he knew it would only last a few minutes before new growth set in. If he was already hacking up flowers, it was really only a matter of time.

Pulling himself painfully to his feet, House glanced at the flower in the toilet and grimaced. _Narcissus poeticus_. Unrequited love and selfishness, ‘return my affection.’ Boy, wasn’t he glad he memorized all those flower meanings in high school.

He flushed the toilet, disposing of the evidence, right as the bathroom door opened.

“House?” It was Foreman’s voice. He probably had Chase and Taub on his heels, Thirteen lingering outside. “You okay in there?”

“Peachy,” House announced brightly. He let himself out of the stall and went to the sinks like nothing had happened.

Foreman was staring at him as he went about his business washing his hands. 

“What are you looking at?” He asked irritably. 

Taub cleared his throat slightly. “You, uh, have a little something on your face.”

House looked up at his face in the mirror, and found that there was blood on his lips and in the stubble on his chin. 

“Damn it,” he muttered, wetting a paper towel and cleaning it off. “Now you’ve all discovered that I’m a vampire.”

“House, what’s going on?” Chase crossed his arms. “Are you okay? Should we be getting Wilson or someone?”

At the mention of Wilson, his chest tightened again.

 _Oh, god_.

“No, you don’t need to get Wilson. I’m fine. Go away.”

“Are you sure? Because--”

“ _Now_ ,” House snapped. “Or you’re all fired.”

Taub looked to Foreman, who shrugged and made to leave with Chase on his tail. As the door swung shut, House caught a glimpse of Thirteen loitering in the hall.

He took a deep breath, steadying himself, but neither endeavor bore much fruit; his breath caught, and he reckoned the ensuing tickle of petals in his throat only caused his heart rate to skyrocket further.

Before he knew it, he was once again hunched over the toilet, retching dozens of roundish, many-petaled blossoms, yellow and pink and red and orange, drenched in blood.

“Zinnias,” House mumbled to himself, feeling rather dizzy, coppery tang on his lips, his teeth, his tongue. “ _Chrysogonum peruvianum_. Meaning…” 

He coughed a few more times, loosing a few petals from the roof of his mouth. “Meaning ‘thinking of you.’”

House struggled his way upright, flushed the toilet, and gave his appearance a cursory check in the mirror. Wiping away any stray petals and flecks of blood, he turned and left the bathroom.

-

“I need you to write me a prescription.”

Thirteen looked up from her place at the conference room table, mild alarm flashing in her eyes.

“You’re not… not for Vicodin, right?”

“No, for weedkiller,” House muttered bitterly. “I need requitant.” 

Her eyes widened a fraction. “Requitant? You have hanahaki?”

He groaned. “No, I think it’s yummy.”

“How -- for how long? How bad is it?” Thirteen began fumbling around her pockets for her prescription pad. “Do you know who it is?”

“It’s been a week and I’ve got full blooms,” House replied, pointedly ignoring her last question.

“Holy shit,” Thirteen exclaimed quietly. “You have to get the surgery or you’ll be dead in a month.”

House shook his head. “Not if I’ve got the requitant. Take the edge off, give me an extra week or two. I’ll be fine.”

“Have you told Cuddy?” House glared at her. “Wilson?”

He opened his mouth to respond, to make some cutting remark, but closed it again rapidly when he felt another bouquet of zinnias press against his airway.

“Are you okay?” Thirteen looked up from her pad, concerned at his pained expression.

“Trash can,” he gasped, barely managing the words before he doubled over in a coughing fit.

Thirteen quickly grabbed the trash can that sat by the coffee machine, and returning to his side, held it out for him; she was a second too late, though, and his cupped hands already held a few orange and red zinnias, as well as a mangled, pinkish, red-stained peony, which he promptly dumped in the can before coughing up some more flowers.

 _Peony_ , House thought, trying his best to ignore the fact that one of his employees was all but holding his hair. _Kingdom, plantae. Tracheophyte, angiosperm, eucidot. Order, saxifragales. Family, Paeoniaceae._ Paeonia suffruticosa. _Means shame, bashfulness, anger._

“You’ve already got two different flowers,” Thirteen said softly when he had finally managed to spit out the last pink petal, nearly five minutes later.

House made a vague noise of disagreement. “Three,” he corrected, voice hoarse. “First was a daffodil, then the zinnias, now peonies.”

He faintly remembered how good he had felt when that daffodil had finally cleared his lungs, earlier, how easily he’d been able to breathe; it felt like ages ago now. Already, his chest felt thick again, even after ten minutes with his face in a trash can.

“You’ve gotta do something about this,” Thirteen advised in a near-whisper. She handed him the slip from her pad, signed and ready.

Until the paper was in his hands, House hadn’t realized how shaky they were. There was blood on his fingers; he wiped it off on his jeans.

“This is me, doing something about this,” he said, and turned to go downstairs, leaving Thirteen alone with the trash can of bloody flowers.

-

It was getting worse.

The leaves and stems and roots and blossoms inside of House’s lungs were blocking off his airways, choking him, and faster than he thought it would happen. The requitant helped a little, and he thought maybe it was the whole reason he was still alive, but he couldn’t be sure.

He was, however, pretty sure that the problem was only exacerbated by living with the bastard who was causing it.

After that first week where he’d managed to avoid Wilson pretty well, the other man had gotten suspicious of him and started going out of his way to spend more time around him.

That was not good for the unreasonably vengeful flora who had made themselves at home in House’s pulmonary system.

It was getting harder and harder to explain away the more and more frequent trips to the bathroom, where he’d sometimes be for an hour or longer, and harder to explain the way his voice was constantly shot through, and harder to explain why he was so out of breath when all he’d done was walk from the kitchen to the couch, and harder to explain why he was so pale and why he had gotten so thin recently and why there were dark circles unders his eyes and why, why, why, why, why.

House didn’t sleep most nights anymore. Instead, he would hug the rim of the toilet bowl while he retched into it, heaving up lungfuls of flowers. Delicate purple aster, reddish-pink impatiens, red carnations and chrysanthemums and roses and tulips, forget-me-nots and gardenias and honeysuckle and lavender and bellflowers and mallow and primrose and a half dozen other things, all screaming _love! love! love!_

It, quite literally, made him sick.

Wilson knew something was wrong, too, kept trying to catch him in the act of whatever it was he thought House was up to. Wilson always knew when something was wrong. House hated that about him, which in his screwed-up brain essentially equated fondness, which in turn led to him pulling long yellow ylang-ylang petals out of the back of his throat at three in the morning, trying to be quiet so Wilson wouldn’t hear and try to check on him.

Every breath he took rattled, and Wilson kept trying to sneak up on him with a stethoscope, and it was getting harder and harder to avoid him when House had to contend with a leg that was hurting more than ever due to the constant kneeling, lungs that were full of foliage, and the inability to get more than a few steps without gasping for air.

“Please, tell me what this is,” Wilson had begged one night, when he’d successfully caught House on the bathroom floor, pale-faced and shaking and spattered with blood, the damning purplish clovenlip toadflax flushed mere moments before he was caught. 

_Can’t you see I’m in love with you, I’m in love with you and it’s killing me_ , the flowers screamed, but all House could do was lick his lips and rub his aching thigh. 

Wilson had knelt beside him and taken House’s head in his hands, and whispered again, “Please, please tell me, let me help you,” but the touch was only making things worse and it was all he could do to bite back the _sorry, sorry, sorry,_ the _regret, sorrow, repentance_ of the tiny yellow rue that was trying to rip a hole in his trachea.

Cuddy cornered him at work and asked him what hell was going on, and he was too tired, too drained to make any kind of joke. She tried to get him to let her examine him, very well tried to force him to let her, but House whacked her shin with his cane and limped off, ignoring what it meant for him that he couldn’t muster any real force behind the hit, that he couldn’t hear himself think over his own wheezing.

The requitant stopped helping. He knew it was only a matter of time, at this point, what with the way every other breath he took tasted of blood and petals clung to the back of his throat each time he coughed. Still, he kept telling himself he was going to be fine, that everything would work out in the end. He sounded like one of those idiots in the clinic.

Eventually, House stopped telling himself everything was going to be fine, because one night, everything decidedly stopped being fine.

Every breath _hurt_ , each inhale a bolt of searing, blinding pain, sharp like lightning and hot like knives in his damaged lungs. House swayed on his feet, barely managing to stay upright, barely even conscious of the world around him, struggling to take each short, ragged breath. It wasn’t nearly enough. His O2 sats were probably dangerously low, and he _knew_ he needed to get to the hospital, but right now all of his strength was devoted to not passing out.

“House?”

He screwed his eyes shut tight when he heard Wilson, trying to block out the sound of his voice, hoping beyond all hope that those goddamned chrysanthemums would leave him alone. 

A hand came to rest lightly on his shoulder, a second on his forehead. House flinched away, so hard he nearly fell, but still wouldn’t open his eyes. Maybe if he didn’t see him, he’d be okay.

“Christ, you’re burning up,” Wilson whispered. “House, what the hell is going on?”

Faintly, House knew it was too late, he was going to find out, he was going to know and then nothing would be okay ever again, but even thinking was wearing him out and he really wanted to not be on the ground right now, so he went back to devoting all his attention to not falling.

Wilson had a firm grasp on his shoulder now, and House was too tired to wriggle out of it, so he just stood there helplessly as Wilson pressed a stethoscope to his heaving chest and drew another painful, shuddering breath.

“House, I need you to open your eyes for me. Please, can you do that?”

House found that he could. He blinked once, twice, as Wilson shone a penlight in his eyes. His vision swam; everything was rather fuzzy, and the stars twinkling in and out of existence were being threatened by the fast encroaching darkness on the edges. He wobbled, and leaned into Wilson for support, too far gone to realize that touching Wilson was the last thing he needed right now.

Saint that he was, Wilson immediately slipped an arm under House’s and around his shoulders, propping him upright as he tried to move him to the couch where he could sit. House went limply with him, hardly aware of his feet moving as a tell-tale lump formed in the back of his throat.

There was a pang in his chest, and suddenly he was coughing again, and Wilson quickly maneuvered him to the ground as House’s legs went out from underneath him. Wilson was rubbing small, soothing circles into his back, but he couldn’t even begin to acknowledge it as thick purple stalks of hyacinth began to sprout from his mouth.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Wilson breathed, pausing in his ministrations. “Oh, fucking _hell_ , House, we have to go to the hospital _now_.”

“Hyacinth,” House mumbled drowsily. Fighting for breath was starting to get tiring. He wanted to go to sleep so badly. “ _Hyacinthus orientalis_. Purple means…”

Distantly, he heard Wilson again. Why was Wilson here? He sounded distressed, like he was trying to keep it together and maybe not doing such a great job of it. “There’s an ambulance on the way. Tell me what purple means, House. Please?”

“Means sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sorry, sorry.”

The ever-approaching darkness clouded over, blocking his vision, and that seemed like as good a time as any to go to sleep.

-

A sharp pain in his chest woke House from a blissful, dreamless sleep.

He took a few minutes to gather his bearings, disoriented as he was, before he could figure out where exactly he’d woken up. Luckily, he’d woken up on the patient end of the deal more than a few times, so it wasn’t entirely difficult to deduce.

What was interesting was the presence of a slight weight against his hand. He glanced to the side, and saw that there was a hand grasping his own. Honeysuckle vines twisted up his windpipe as he hazarded a further look. 

The hand that held his own gave way to an arm, which gave way to an entire person, and Wilson was sitting in the chair next to his bed, eyes wide and tired.

“You idiot.” The relief in Wilson’s voice was nearly tangible.

House hummed in response, reaching up to move the oxygen mask on his face so he could speak. “That’s no way to treat a dying man, Dr. Wilson.”

Wilson smiled, albeit rather sadly, and did not let go of House’s hand. He sort of wished he would, because there were some morning glories in his chest that were eager to make themselves known.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize,” Wilson sighed. “I should have picked up on the symptoms before it got this bad.”

“Shut up,” House mumbled. “I was trying not to be obvious about it. You not knowing was sort of the point.”

Wilson shook his head, the usual trace of fondness now replaced with concern. For a few terse seconds, neither man spoke.

“They wanted to do the surgery as soon as you came in. It took Cuddy and I and half your team to get them to wait for you to wake back up. We’ve got you hooked up to triple the usual dose of IV requitant right now, just so your lungs won’t collapse,” Wilson explained at last. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” House replied, feeling the now-familiar scraping of petals in his throat. “Pass me the bin.”

Wilson grabbed the pink plastic bin off the end of the bed and held it out to House, who immediately began choking out small yellow flowers into it.

“Agrimony,” Wilson noted, as House spat the last blood-flecked petals into the bin. He looked over at him, a grin playing on his lips. “You’re welcome.”

House went to crack a joke about this damn disease revealing he had feelings, but ended up lying back down with the oxygen mask over his face, wheezing and exhausted from coughing. Wilson looked at him seriously, and he would’ve rolled his eyes had it been worth the effort.

“Something has to change, House, and soon. As in, ‘within the next twelve hours’ soon.” Wilson put his hands on his hips. “You need to tell me who it is if you think there’s even a _chance_ that it’s requited.”

“It’s not,” House rasped decisively.

“How do you know? Have you asked?”

“No,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t take a genius to know when someone’s not interested.”

Wilson stared at him, mouth opening to start a sentence and then closing as he abandoned it. “It’s Cuddy, isn’t it?” He asked at last. “And she rejected you.”

House winced as a particularly sharp pain shot through his chest. “No, it’s not Cuddy. I like her, sure, but that was… that was a distraction.”

“Who, then? Is… is it that woman you met at Mayfield? Cameron? Thirteen?”

“It’s your mother,” House grumbled. 

Wilson frowned disapprovingly. “I’m serious, House. If you’re really certain that whoever-she-is doesn’t like you back, we need to get you scheduled for surgery.”

“No, what we _need_ to do is figure out who you’re wearing that tie for,” House said accusingly.

Wilson looked down at his rumpled dress shirt and undone green tie, and then back up to House. “I wore this to work. I didn’t have time to change before I turned around and came back here.”

House eyed him suspiciously. “But you have been talking to someone, haven’t you?”

“House…”

“Wilson.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I… Sam reached out to me recently. I wasn’t going to say anything unless something… happened, I guess.”

House fell silent for a long moment, the only sound the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the hissing of the oxygen mask. When he finally spoke again, he sounded… tired. Defeated.

“There’s your answer, then.” He shifted. “I need to pee.”

Wilson didn’t try to stop him as he dragged himself out of bed, wincing, and hobbled caneless to the bathroom. He was glad for that, at least.

That way, Wilson wasn’t able to see when House leaned over the toilet and began hacking up thick, ropy strands of blood red love-lies-bleeding.

-

“Hey.”

House pulled another petal from his mouth and tossed it into the pink bin, already full of black dahlias. “What do you want?”

Foreman sat down in the vacant chair at his bedside. “To tell you you’re an idiot.”

“Great, thanks,” House muttered. He coughed a few times, hard. “You and Wilson can start a club.”

Sitting up a bit, he spat a bloody impatiens into the bin, the red of the flower standing out amongst all the black.

“You’re not subtle, you know. If you two would spend five minutes actually talking about _this_ \--” here Foreman made a vague encompassing gesture -- “both of you might learn something.”

House fixed him with a withering glare that probably came across as more wilting. “Nothing to talk about. I’m scheduled for surgery first thing tomorrow morning.”

“See, that’s your problem. You can’t even admit to yourself that there’s a _possibility_ your feelings are requited. Just tell him and save yourself the pain later.”

Instead of trying to come up with a witty response, House just fixed his eyes on the wall directly in front of him and obstinately refused to acknowledge Foreman’s presence. A move worthy of a five-year-old, perhaps, but that had never deterred him before. Eventually, Foreman left, a knowing smirk on his face.

That was the problem with raising the kids to be like him. They got too good at reading him.

-

“Wilson.”

The dozing shape in the chair beside the bed started, blinking a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes.

“Mm,” Wilson murmured. “Sorry, you were asleep when I came back and I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Wilson,” House repeated, more urgently. “Wilson.”

“I’m here.” Wilson reached out and took House’s hand gently, concern clear in his voice. 

“Wilson,” House said, squeezing his hand, “I’m scared.”

In the dim light of the hospital room, House saw Wilson’s eyes widen a modicum, and he breathed as deeply as he could, ignoring the stars sparking at the corners of his vision.

“I don’t think the requitant is working anymore,” he continued quietly. “Not enough to make a difference, anyway.”

Wilson’s brows knit together, worry stark in his face. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Foreman had better be right,” House whispered.

Something unrecognizable flashed in Wilson’s eyes, and House choked as he felt a flower break away from the growth in his lungs. Wilson got the bin without even waiting for House to ask, and he spluttered out a few mauled daffodils. 

“I’ve always liked daffodils,” Wilson mused absentmindedly.

“I know,” House said. 

He looked up, and Wilson met his gaze; in the scarce yellow light that filtered through the blinds on the window, House couldn’t tell where the brown iris became pupil, his eyes a solid well of warm, worried darkness.

House closed his eyes, savoring the image of Wilson in his mind, knowing full well that the next words out of his mouth were going to ruin everything.

“House?” 

“It’s you,” he whispered hoarsely. He coughed again, hard.

Wilson shook his head slightly, brows furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

House spat another daffodil into the plastic bin as a response. Confusion muddled the dark expanse of Wilson’s eyes, and then realization set in, his mouth dropping open just a bit.

“Oh,” Wilson breathed quietly. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah,” House muttered.

Silence, thick and suffocating, filled the space between them, choking what little air was left from House’s lungs. He gasped as another bitter stalk of purple hyacinth forced its way up his throat, saying what he didn’t want to, and at the sight of it a sad and earnest pain that made House cringe settled in Wilson’s eyes.

“Oh, House,” Wilson murmured, stretching out his unoccupied hand to cup House’s cheek. “Don’t be.”

And then Wilson tipped his head up and traced a thumb along his whiskered jaw and leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips, slowly, gently, and House _melted_ into him, vaguely aware of how fucking sappy that sounded, and smiled against Wilson’s mouth, knowing that his stubble was scratchy and that he probably tasted of blood and a dozen different flowers and feeling inordinately pleased to find that Wilson didn’t seem to mind.

House finally pulled away, flushed and rather breathless, and grinned. “Does this mean I can cancel that surgery, then?” 

Wilson laughed, a clear, ringing sound that was far too loud for the time of night, stirring something in House’s chest that, for once, didn’t feel like a goddamned carnation or a primrose or an aster, didn’t burn like a daffodil.

“I think so,” Wilson said, and he leaned in and planted a soft kiss on House’s forehead. “I’m gonna go ahead and lower your requitant, okay? I’ll set it so there’s just enough to make sure your lungs are clear, you’ll probably be able to be off it by morning.”

“Mm,” House agreed, suddenly aware of how tired he was.

For a moment, there were only the soft sounds of Wilson adjusting the requitant drip, and the rasping of House’s breath. He distantly wondered how bad the damage was, how long it was going to take to heal, but he was too exhausted to worry about it right then.

“Hey, shove over,” Wilson huffed. “If I fall asleep in that chair again, I’m gonna wake up with a new kind of scoliosis.”

House wriggled over a bit to make room for him on the admittedly rather narrow hospital bed, shifting as Wilson positioned himself facing him. Wilson wrapped an arm around House, who in turn pressed his face into the hollow between Wilson’s face and neck. A slightly more awake part of his brain informed him that this disgustingly tender display of affection was incredibly uncharacteristic of him, but the warm and comfortable rest of his brain had already decided that this disgustingly tender display of affection was _also_ incredibly nice, and predictably shushed the awake part.

As he drifted off, House realized drowsily that this was the easiest he’d been able to breathe in weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> some notes: i may have taken some artistic license with the disease. so sue me. as far as i know requitant is not a thing. i made it up because i wanted to have a medicine in this and i also thought it sounded cool so yeah. the line about "one narcissus for another" is a fun reference to the fact that the name narcissus is derived from the greek word for intoxication, 'narcotic.' or something like that. all the flower meanings in this are just what wikipedia told me im not actually that smart. you might wanna look some of em, especially the ones whose meanings aren't said outright :3  
> come harass me on [tumblr](dykecameron.tumblr.com)!! i don't bite very hard :)


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